After a year or so of trying to reconcile my feelings for my now-deceased father, my daughter—who is taking a creative writing course as part of her psychology degree—shared a homework prompt from her class and asked if I wanted to do the exercise with her.
The joys of parenthood, for me, have come in many forms and ever-increasing levels of sophistication. It seems like, only yesterday, I was teaching her to read, and now, she’s teaching me to think. The prompt was to write about a ghost. So, I accepted the challenge and, in the process, learned a few things about myself and put some other things to rest, one of them being the ghost of my father.
***
The Ghost of My Father
The guy had been dead for maybe 15 seconds, but he was already ashen. His jaw was flopped open, and his skin sagged limp and emotionless. What teeth he had hovered discolored and misshapen over the dark, breathless cavity of his mouth. His pose could have been mistaken for sleep, but for him, there’d never been a sleep not also accompanied by snoring, regardless of where he was or who was there.
I looked at his mouth in relief. Finally, I never had to listen to him again.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” said Peaches, the Jamaican nurse at the rest home where Dad had spent his last weeks. She clipped a rose from some flowers in the room, placed it on Dad’s chest, smoothed the blankets, smoothed his hair, and lifted his jaw to close it. It just flopped open again. Typical.
“Thanks for everything, Peaches,” I replied. “You really do incredible work.”
I called my sister, Les.
“He’s gone,” I told her.
“Is he?” she acknowledged, “Ok, I’ll be there in twenty minutes. How’s Mum?”
“I haven’t told her yet,” I replied. “That’s next on the list.”
I sat on Mum’s empty bed, pausing to take in the moment. It was not grief I was feeling, not anger. It was… it was nothing; nothing other than relief.
I savored the silence; that was nice. I’d spent the last few days listening to his breathing bubble like a partially blocked drainpipe. It’s called the death rattle for good reason.
He’d asked me only the day before if he’d been a good dad.
I lied.
Then he told me I looked fat and that he was ashamed of the way I looked at my sister’s wedding thirty-five years before.
I told him I was impressed with his memory and turned my attention to Mum.
Mum couldn’t remember where she lived, my name, or where her long, long gone grandmother was, but she always smiled and told me she loved me. How these two stayed married for 60 years, I will never understand.
On to the next chapter of life.
I walked into the rest home’s common area, sat next to Mum, took her hand, and told her Dad had passed. She cried for a minute, and I cried with her. Then she stopped and asked a nurse for a cup of tea, introduced me to Peaches, and asked me where Dad was.
“It’s teatime,” she smiled, “Where’s Bob?”
“He ran away with another woman,” I said with a smile.
“Oh, thank god,” she laughed, “I’m going to find me a toy boy. Hopefully under the age of 80.”
For the last 55 years, not a week had passed without me talking to Mum. But Dad was a different story. He was weird, awkward, irritable. He was anti-social, childish, stubborn, chauvinist. He had gross eating habits, snapped at people when they talked while he was watching TV—which was always—and never called me once in my adult life to say hi.
I’d done my best to gain his respect but quit trying by age 20. I had no respect for him, I didn’t like him, and I even recall thinking, as a child, that I hoped he died first so I could spend time with Mum without his TV, or snoring, or eating noises.
He was the reason I left home so early, the reason I stayed away, and the reason I moved to the States. I called Mum every Sunday at 11 a.m. for thirty years, and all we did was laugh. That’s never changed.
But Dad? I always felt uptight around him, so I stayed away, and now he was gone, I no longer needed to.
“Peaches?” I said to the nurse, “We should get his body out of there, right? Mum is going to want to rest.”
“You don’t want to pay your respects?” she said. There was no judgment in her question; she wanted to be sure she understood me correctly.
“Let’s get Mum settled,” I confirmed. I had no interest in ever seeing Dad again.
Mum did well over the following days and weeks. She never remembered Dad had died. That was a new experience for me. Sometimes Mum would see my face and cotton on.
“Is he…” she would ask, pointing to the sky.
I’d shake my head, smile, and point to the ground. She’d crack up, and we’d move on.
The funeral came and went. I wrote the Eulogy. I lied about that, too.
Then, there was the question of what to do with the ashes. My suggestions were to put them in front of the TV next to the remote or flush them down the toilet.
The truth was, I didn’t care.
It took a few weeks before the stories started floating to the surface like a drowned body now bloated with putrid gas.
There was the family picture by the Rhine Falls. Dad had yelled at us moments before but insisted on taking the picture anyway. That picture was a testament to how miserable he made us.
There were the daily humiliations, the famous doorbell story, the memories of being yelled at but not hearing his words, avoiding his eyes, watching his mouth move, judging his teeth.
There was the lifetime of him never calling his son.
There was his neglect, which, to be honest, I preferred to his weird, petulant arguments.
There was his telling me not to be so stupid, to grow up, or to be quiet—things that do violence against a young boy’s esteem.
This black and blue ghoul, dripping with controlling behavior and bloated with a putrid air of arrogance, visited me daily. It was like I was vomiting bad experiences consumed long ago.
I felt nothing for him while he was alive. I felt nothing for him when he died, but in the weeks, months, and years following his death, his abuse and neglect, this ghost of my father visited upon me a pain I had spent my entire life trying to avoid.
He’s gone now, mostly.
Mum’s still here, still wondering where he is, and still laughing whenever I tell her he’s “down there.”
“Oh, thank god,” she laughs, “I’m going to find me a toy boy. Hopefully under the age of 80.”
She says that line every time… and we laugh… every time.
What an incredible woman she is.
Leave a comment